Attention: There’s no excuse not to vote in the 253 - over and out

Channeling the great Greek scholar, John Belushi: The election’s not over until it’s over ... or something like that. AP photo/NBCAP

Channeling the great Greek scholar, John Belushi: The election’s not over until it’s over ... or something like that. AP photo/NBCAP

Precious minutes are slipping away in the homestretch of the 2016 election.

To really feel the impending deadline of a historic event that finally — mercifully — will be over, go to the Pierce County website and behold the auditor’s countdown clock. For fatalists on the political fringes, it might as well be counting down to doomsday.

A great many folks believe this day of reckoning can’t be over soon enough. More than a few are twitchy about voting for any of the damaged candidates at the top of the ticket, but they’ve held their noses and gotten it over with.

The most unfortunate reaction of all? Some of your friends and neighbors might sit it out, thinking the election is essentially already over.

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Millions of early-bird voters from more than two-thirds of the states have been casting ballots for days. National campaigns have ignored all but the battleground states for weeks. Pollster-oracles have prognosticated Election Day outcomes for months. All these things can lead to an overall feeling of “why bother?”

“Over? Did you say over? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”

OK, so Bluto’s overt ignorance of world affairs rivals that of the Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary “What is Aleppo?” Johnson. But you get the point.

Washington voters have been called to action on several fronts, not just to elect a commander in chief. We’ve been recruited to shape far-reaching public policy issues such as gun safety, tax reform and a fair minimum wage.

The legislators and statewide leaders we elect will decide whether Washington school children of every zip code will be treated with equity, and whether the mentally ill and homeless will be treated with dignity.

In the 253 area code, we will decide whether to invest a princely sum in our grandchildren’s mass-transit future, and whether to make it easier for citizens to put do-it-yourself laws on the ballot. We will choose people to lead Pierce County out of King County’s shadow and into the dawn of 2020.

No vote should be taken for granted, no ballot left unmarked on the kitchen counter.

Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson has set the bar lower, at 78 to 80 percent, which would fall short of the heights reached during the first Obama election. As of Friday, only seven of Washington’s 39 counties had a lower return rate.

“Pierce County regularly underperforms when you look at the statewide average,” Anderson said. “It’s not something we’re happy about, but it’s also not something we can do anything about.”

Political candidates and their cleverly disguised financiers could do something about it. Instead, they breed voter cynicism by pandering to the lowest common denominator.

The ugly tenor of the 2016 campaign has turned off many voters, and not just the presidential contest. State legislative races in South Sound swing districts have featured ads produced in astonishingly poor taste.

Case in point: an independent mailer, funded by a committee run by Senate Republicans, that accuses the Democrat running for Senate in the 28th District of disrespecting jury duty. What it shamelessly leaves out is that she was hit by a car and seriously injured while on her way to jury duty.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if one-fifth of local voters want no part in this mess.

But let’s not make excuses. All registered Washington voters 18 and older have a duty to activate mind and conscience, sort through the noise and fill out their ballots.

As a vote-by-mail state, we don’t have to worry about photo ID laws, limited polling place hours, vigilante partisan poll watchers or other obstacles. Voting doesn’t get much easier than depositing a ballot in a dropbox by Tuesday at 8 p.m., or making sure the envelope is postmarked by Nov. 8.

Each of us also has the ability to stand up to the cynicism and chicanery, speak truth to politicians and demand “no more.”

Over? Did somebody say the era of the hopeful, engaged electorate is over? That the democracy envisioned by presidents Kennedy and Reagan as a shining “city on a hill” is over?